Sindh national Question

It' is a measure of the political system of Pakistan that Sindh is the

most developed province of the country. while its indigenous people
are after the Baloch the most marginalized. In no other region of
Pakistan is the divide between urban prosperity' and rural 'deprivation
as wide as it h in Sindh. 'Due to the concentration of commerce and
industry in its, capital, city, 'Karachi, Sindh has highest per 'capita
income in Pakistan but its rural inhabitants are among the poorest in
the country. Such a striking disparity has made Sindh the hotbed of various kinds
of nationalism, ranging from separatists and right-wing autonomists to
socialist intellectuals and left-wing peasant groups. An interesting
characteristic of Sindhi politics, however, is that since the first free
national elections in 1970, Sindhis have overwhelmingly been voting
for the federalist Pakistan People's Party, founded by Sindhi politician
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and later Jed by his daughter Benazir Bhutto·.
 Peripheral Region
• Due to its geographical location, Sindh was a peripheral region for the invaders from the north as
well as for the rulers in Delhi.
• Although the first Muslim invaders (AD 711-712) had landed in Sindh
from the Middle East, the subsequent invasions were all from the north.
• The most long-lasting Muslim rulers of India, the Mughals, who had
• come from Central Asia, chose Lahore and Delhi as the centres of their
empire. At the peak of their rule, the Mughals tried to impose a revenue
system throughout India, but Sindhi clans resisted the central state's
attempts and rebelled against its heavy revenue demands, and the system
could therefore not be applied in its entirety.
Hence, the political and socio-economic structure that developed in Sindh was different from
• the northern regions of Punjab and the North West Frontier Province.
 Peripheral Region

In 1843, when the British took over Sindh (and four years later made it
part of the Bombay Presidency), the autonomous status of Sindh came
to an end, but the power and prestige of the local elite was left intact
for political and administrative reasons.
Legalization of Feudalism in Sindh
• The colonial officials had difficulty identifying the owners of, land there
were no individual. owners, because the pre-colonial state itself was the
supreme landlord.
• The situation in Sindh was quite different from the rest of lndia.
• Here, the colonial officials did not face much difficulty in finding the
owners of land, for in Sindh, by the time of the colonial takeover, powerful
individuals had already become the de facto owners of land during the
• Talpur rule (1782-1843) and had established one of the most repressive
feudal systems in the Indian subcontinent.
Legalization of Feudalism in Sindh
• This did not change under colonialism, because no uniform agrarian
policy was applied to all regions. it varied according to the particular
conditions of a region and the influence and power of the local elite.
• In Sindh, such interference with the Muslim estates was avoided by the
state, which treated the landholders 'as "the aristocracy of Sind" and
despite reservations confirmed them in their incomes and privileges.
• Consequently, waderos (landlords) and pirs not only continued with some
of the largest landholdings in India but also became legal owners of that
land. The interventionist colonial state has imposed its authority on the
region but continued to treat it as an outpost of the Bombay Presidency
Legalization of Feudalism in Sindh
• Despite colonial interest in developing Karachi as a port city, the rest
Of Sindh remained isolated across its mountains, deserts, salt flats and
swamps, as 'a backwater, out of touch with the rest of the Presidency.

• Most of the Bombay legislative Council enactments did not apply to

Sindh, which was ruled under a separate system of government and an
almost independent judicial system
 Agricultural Hinterland
• The colonialists regarded Sindh as an 'irrigation province' which
could, like Punjab, be developed into a fertile and lucrative agricultural
region.
• They brought the existing inundation canals under the management
of the Public Works Department, and elaborate surveys were then conducted to estimate
the potential irrigability of the land and to convert the inundation canals into perennial
systems so that agriculture was not dependent on rain alone.
By the twentieth century, Sindh came to be
classified alongside Punjab, the United Provinces and Madras, a province with the best
prospects for investment. With the opening of the Sukkar Barrage Scheme in 1932, an
additional 7 million acres came under cultivation, and by the time of partition in 1947,
Sindh had become 'a surplus province to the tune of some 500 million rupees.'
 Agricultural Hinterland
• providing 'food grains to the deficit regions of India and raw. cotton to
the textile mills of Bombay, Ahmedabad as well as in England.‘
• The pressures of market economy, which forced cultivators to
produce cash crops on a large scale, in any case changed the rural
landscape by devaluing the self-sufficiency' of rural life and making it
increasingly dependent on urban centres.
• As a result, a redefinition of the balance of, power between urban and
rural sectors, as well as a sea change in the structure of power
relations between various social classes, was unavoidable.
 Agricultural Hinterland
• But under the new circumstances, when India was virtually run by the
district officers, and each one of them was' the 'mother and father' of
the area, state employment had become the source of power,
prestige and influence, and therefore sought after by the rich and
poor alike.
• Twentieth century crisis.
• The burden of the land revenue imposed by the British forced 'the
rural community to borrow more than ever beforefrom the Hindu
moneylenders,
• the banias, in order td be able to pay taxes to the government.
 Pre Partition Politics
• It is important to note here that the growing interest, of the Sindhi
elite in modern politics must not be seen as a reaction to colonial
rule.
• There were two important factors: (a) the emergence of new social
classes and interest groups; and
(b) the colonial administration's political and administrative reforms.
If the first factor was the result of the introduction of the modem
bureaucratic state and its market economy.
 Pre Partition Politics
• second was the state's response to the emergent situation.
• At the beginning of the twentieth century there were five discernible
social groups in Sindh: the traditional Sindhi landlords, the waderos
and pirs; cultivator landowners; Hindu absentee landlords,
moneylenders and traders; state employees; and landless
tenants/labourers.
 Pre Partition Politics
• Small wonder then that the demand for the separation of Sindh from
the Bombay Presidency was first made in 1913 by a Karachi-based
Hindu trader-politician, Harchandra Vishindas. His call was couched in
• the usual nationalistic jargon of 'Sindh's distinctive cultural and
geographical character'but in actual terms it was the voice of the
comparatively fragile commercial class of Sindh that felt threatened by the
• more prosperous Bombay traders. Vishindas was soon joined by a
Sindhi Muslim politician, Ghulam Mohammad Bhurgri who, though
originally a wadero, was a successful London-educated lawyer representing
Muslim urban interests.